It’s About Control…….and an Invitation

Let’s face it we are living in a desert that can claim us at any moment. We just don’t have any real control over the outcomes of our lives.

I have also come to the conclusion that desire and control are at the root of all human sorrow. When we can not have or control something we desire of material, physical and mindful matters (all things of this temporal world) we inevitably will experience the pain of “unattainable grasping”.

The Need to Control is a an outcome of desire and like it’s evil stepmother it leaves us empty and lost when we inevitably fail at manipulating that which we can not.

The inevitable truth is we only control one thing; how we react to everything that goes on around us and our personal actions are the only thing we have control over.

Having said that I do not for one minute forget that there are individuals who seem to lack even that one aspect of inner power. The results of another mass murder and suicide call into question if in fact everyone has control of their own actions. What happens when someone suffers from a mental or psychological disease and disorder? How does that terribly unfair physical limitation become reconciled with this hypothesis?

Truth is it can’t be completely reconciled. We have no control to see into the mind of a person afflicted with mental illness but I have had the occasion to work with the mentally handicapped and with the exception of extreme brain damage every child had the ability with some compassionate guidance to make decisions affecting their actions.

What happened to Adam Lanza from the time he arrived like the rest of us as a perfectly guiltless tiny infant, to the moment he made the decision to kill his mother, innocent children and finally himself will never be fully known although Fox and CNN will tell you otherwise. However; I am willing to bet that somewhere along the line his desire to control something in his life he could not, left him with so much pain and sorrow that is was converted to despair and hopelessness and maybe even to anger before he controlled his final decision to place all the bullets where they landed.

Those bullets were under his control and as such they ended the lives of innocent children and adults who never controlled how long they would live. It is a sad and terrible tragedy and one of many that will continue to unfold in a world that is in fact out of our control.

We do however have one weapon against the horror and it is not the one Charlton Heston suggested be pried from his cold dead hands.

That weapon is Love and we control this Weapon of Ultimate Construction.

Love is the construction of forgiveness, the construction of surrender, the construction of peace, and the construction of perfection even in the midst of great horror.

Some time ago I had dinner with my friend Matt and and over a glass of red wine we concluded that God is intimately involved in this entire process because at the dawn of creation He surrendered all His control and ever since we have tried and failed to be God. He constructed with Love the perfect blank canvas and let us loose on it with our human brushes and He knew exactly what He was doing.

As my friend so aptly said ” This control was surrendered to us by God in order to replace it with the invitation of relationship”. We can not have real relationship and control simultaneously. One cancels out the other.

In a genuine invitation there is no control, no coercion, no force, only Faith and Love.

When you have this Faith and Love; you have no interest in control. You have surrendered it happily back to who gave it to you; and you can not exercise control over another human being to suit your own emptiness, your own grasping at a power that can only be gained in it’s release.

My friend then added another interesting perspective: This act of God’s first surrender was in fact the ultimate sacrifice because this act of love for us opened a bridge to relationship that can only be crossed by faith. The same faith He has in us that He invites us to have in Him.

Isn’t it ironic and beautiful that the only way to gain control is to loose it?

That means that tragedies like Sandy Hook, Columbine, Dunblane, Oslo and others yet to come are inevitable. They are inevitable because we have not surrendered the control He gave us back to Him.

This begs the question; “Will we ever cross this bridge and end the sadness?”

I for one don’t know but have faith and send love to those who need it because you can and that gift is under your control.

Comments

So well written, as always Rich, I love reading your inspiration. You are so humble and that is part of the giving up and I know how difficult it has been for you to do, but with all the practice that you have had over the past several years, you are getting very good at being humbly faithful. It is such a blessing to watch how you grow and how you share your unconditional LOVE with the world.

As I learn each day to “let go” a little more I can see how God takes the reigns and guides me to where I need to be.

Again I will quote Mary Baker Eddy, “Divine Love Always Has Met and Always Will Meet Every Human Need.”

It’s funny that I happened to come across this blog pot today after the conversation we had regarding this similar subject. I have spoken to you often how essential it is to be willing to take a seat in the back while God takes control of the steering wheel. It is often a scary feeling to relinquish your sense of control to God, but the weight of the world cannot possibly rest on one pair of shoulders. When we finally allow God to shoulder some of that burden, the lightness of heart is profound.